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Forced Entry
stole something a brazen thief never charged with forced entry because "Please don't" didn't lead to blue black marks on the lock and no one sees the bruise prints the scratch marks on my spirit these don't make police reports the dignity missing from my step doesn't qualify as physical evidence I shake when I see him only my homegirls seem to notice their golden light, protective around me his boys' mantra is "lying bitch" they mutter it with sharp machete eyes, occassionally someone rouses himself to say it- "Lying bitch" the words weigh down the wings of airborn birds and for the first time I see these men not as men but as terrorists in training camaflouged bombers on the ground floor of truth taking dynamite to it's foundation. I see myself as a prisoner of war an exile a survivor I wish this wasn't my story but it is a million times over and just when I think it has gone away it reappears at my doorstep in another womans face or on the ten o'clock news and although I have loved men since maybe another sister can't so this is our story and it will be ours until we don't have to claim it anymore until women from Brooklyn to Oakland to South Africa can sit back in amazement and say "I can't believe such things ever occured," until the word "rape" can be wiped out from vocabularies removed from the dictionary stamped out of our memories until then, this will be our story and wounded eyes will tell it even when we don't ==
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Author photo: Bruce Stansbury